


Free to a Good Home

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: HC Bingo, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gale reflects after 3x8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free to a Good Home

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: Written for h/c bingo, prompt, "unrequited pining."

Gale lifted the coffee mug and let the heat roll over his lips. Walt had said that it was the best coffee he’d ever tasted, and Gale had nearly blushed at the compliment. From the man he so admired, the man he had feelings for that he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

Feelings that he was now sure were not returned. So why was he fixating, then? He was thirty-four years old and had been around far too long to still harbor some sort of teenage crush on a man who wanted nothing to do with him, a man who had fired him from the lab he had earned the right to work at.

He had been fired. Fired, him! Even though he had proven that he knew what he was doing, time and time again. He hadn’t messed up the temperature, even though Walt told him he had. There had to be another reason.

Gale sighed. Maybe he would put on some music and sit down, perhaps watch a movie, and then maybe he would feel better about it all. He always felt better when there was something sweet floating through his ears; it was like a caress for the soul.

But even his favorite music, three classical tracks and some bouncy 80’s pop, didn’t settle him. Not yet. It seemed as if Walter White was gnawing at him, teasing him. No, not teasing, just… reminding him that there was something he lacked, and that it was probably something that he would never know and would never regain.

He felt like a dog that had been dropped off at an adoption center; sure, the staff would be told some reason why, like “moving” or “too much responsibility” or “new baby”, but it wasn’t like they told the dog anything at all.

Gale had had a dog once as a kid. A little mini-pin, a sweet dog. He’d had to leave it behind when he moved out and set off, first for Colorado and then for New Mexico. He wondered if he had felt this lost. At least he had somebody; Gale’s parents and sisters who seemed as determined to stay in one place as Gale had been to leave, to travel, to see the wide world, whether it was Thailand or New Mexico or someplace up in Maine that he ended up at by accident.

He’d have to figure out what drove him now. He couldn’t stay here, didn’t want to stay here and look over everything in his apartment that reminded him about what he’d tried to do but couldn’t succeed at. That he’d met the perfect person, perfect mentor and more than that, a kind of hero in the flesh and then gotten fired, been rejected so that he could take some kid (for this new assistant really did look like no more than a kid, a teenager) under his wing? He sighed. 

He’d find a way, though. That was what he had always done, after all. That was what he was good at.

Gale opened his laptop and started to look at places he could visit on his current savings; places he could escape to. Vietnam. Belize. Mozambique.

His lips curled into a smile.

It was almost like he was there already.


End file.
